Mad Russian
by pinkbagels
Summary: Gene's unexpected appreciation for the arts collides with Sam's investigation of a deadly strain of tainted heroin.
1. Chapter 1

MAD RUSSIAN

The rusty sign above the stairs said, simply, 'Underground'. Certainly, this basement club was living up to its name, the air cloudy with smoke, the cramped space within crowded with broken wooden chairs and splintered press board tables. It had more of the trappings of a subterranean storage facility than a club. The place was damp, filthy and contained next to no light save a few bare bulbs in the ceiling and a brave, cobweb smeared window just above the stage that allowed in a flickering of afternoon light. The place had a desperate quality, Sam noted, a sad, hopeless ambiance that was evident in the patrons, their hair long and greasy, and wearing equally grimy attire. No, the Underground was clearly not a hippie hang-out, nor a place for positive vibes—this was the land of the nihilists, the repressed avant garderageaholics. If there were any doubt as to the validity of this assumption, it would be quashed by the scrawny figure on stage who was torturing his guitar, his lyrics a series of out of tune expletives. The air inside the club was hot and close, and it tasted like army fatigues and stale beer on Sam's skin. All the lovely flavours of disillusionment.

"Happy place, this," Gene said, and sniffed. "Club is it, like the rusty sign upstairs says? For who, Sam—The Society Of The Terminally Brooding?"

Sam bristled at Gene's assessment, and made his usual, futile attempt to educate. "It's about going beyond the boundaries in one's artistic expression, in not going along with the maudlin pap the radio insists on playing. This is political, angry, a real grasp of human frustration..."

"Yeah, well, enough about your sex life, Alice, we've got some answers to dig out and not get buried in Woodstock's yang." Gene headed directly for the bar where a large, bald man with a Scottish coat of arms tattooed on the back of his neck kept tabs. "Oi! Rob Roy! Give us a couple of pints and a reason to live!"

The barman raised a bushy red eyebrow, a dirty tea towel thrown over one shoulder. "I should think they's be one and the same," he said.

Gene let out a chortle and took the two greasy pints he'd been handed. "A right palace of philosophers, this. Tell me, Sam, when did you and Nietzsche become bosom pals?"

"More of a Sartre man myself," Sam replied. He reached into his wallet to pay the tab, but the barman waved him off.

"Nivver you mind," the Scotsman said. "On the house." He continued wiping glasses dry with the filthy tea towel. "I'll consider it a bit of extra insurance."

Sam took a tentative sip of his pint, the barman's blithe acceptance of police extortion leaving the brew too bitter for his liking. Gene, of course, had no trouble draining his glass and with a loud thud he slammed it on the surface of a nearby table and shouted out to the barman. "A fish has to drink! Give us another!" He planted himself in a broken wooden chair, the wood splintering against the strain of his weight. He crossed his arms and glared at Sam. "Looks like the fellow on stage has finally done himself in and hung himself with that guitar string. My ears are in silent ecstasy. So, while we have this moment of delightful quiet, perhaps you can remind me again what the hell we are doing here, in a drughole dump, looking for junkies to hold hands with."

Sam rolled his eyes and pulled up a chair, his pint crooked on the uneven table. "Our informant told us the bad strain was purchased here exclusively. There's a good chance the dealer is still selling here, or at least his whereabouts can be traced. Worst case scenario, we get the word out that there's a deadly strain of heroin on the streets and the body count stops at the three we've got laying in the morgue."

Gene was handed a fresh pint and he immediately drained it by half. "If self-destruction is a high art, I'm not going to waste my time cleaning up their masterpiece of a mess."

"Oh, come on," Sam said to Gene, who was now on his third pint. "Don't give me that survival of the fittest crap."

"Nothing of the sort," Gene replied. "This whole trek of yours is rubbish. If some moron wants to fill his veins with noxious chemicals instead of a healthy, iron rich Guinness, that's his choice and he can pay for it." Gene snapped his fingers at the large barman, whose woolly red eyebrows were furrowed in dismay. "Here, Mac MacDonald, give us another round!"

Sam sat fuming across from Gene, a state that had become all familiar. Gene drained his pint with arrogant ease, his mind unperturbed with thoughts of drug smugglers or curious teenagers or damaged people searching for a cure to what hurt them. The utter ignorance of him, Sam thought. The unevolved, unthinking short reach of Gene's brain was a disability that would never find a cure. "You can't just pick and choose who you are going to protect," Sam said to him. "Our duty is to the citizens of this community, and unfortunately, addicts are part of that milieu. An addict is just someone searching for an escape, and that in itself becomes the torture. Addiction is an illness.

Then again, let's see another angle on this that your boxed in mind might comprehend—What if it's not some hard core user next time but a kid, experimenting with drugs? How easy will it be to say to his or her parents, 'Sorry, but the laws of Darwin came into effect and your beloved son or daughter got lost in the evolutionary shuffle'?"

"So if they off themselves by throwing their bodies under a lorry I should arrest the driver? Look, Sam, let's get this straight: Much as I appreciate the expansion of your moral, God-like reach, last I looked my job was to put criminals out of the way of upstanding citizens, and since drugs is a crime, drug addicts are criminals, and I'm not about to make a cup of tea and hold a druggie's hands and start asking how their day went and how they bloody well feel about the state of the world. I'll leave that nancy shit up to brain shrinks, priests and you, shall I?" He took a deep swallow of his pint. "Come on, drink up. They're setting up for another strangled crow versus tortured cat rehearsal and I don't think my sensitive, understanding ears can take much more."

Sam groaned, and took a bitter sip of his drink. Gene sat bored beside him, arms crossed and his expression equally so. He had that look he wore when he was itching to 'pound a few heads', and if anyone so much as sneezed in their general direction at present, the depressed mood in the club would no doubt erupt into violence.

Odd, that, Sam suddenly thought. The place was quiet, eerily so. The few bands and performance artists who had shown up for an afternoon rehearsal had melted into the background, smoke and dust swallowing their figures and leaving shadows behind. Sam took another swallow of his drink, remaining tense and expectant in his seat.

To break this feeling of unease, he waved the monolithic Scotsman over, who already had a fresh pint for Gene in his hand. "Tell me something," Sam said to him. "How well does news travel in this area through here?"

The barman shrugged. "Depends on the news."

"Here's a scoop for you: There's a bad batch of heroin making its rounds and it already killed three people. I don't want to be counting more corpses."

"I'll get the word out," the barman said. "But you're a fool if you think that's going to stop someone taking their hit."

"It's an effort," Sam said.

"A wasted one," the barman replied.

Sam sighed in resignation and watched the barman as he trundled back to his counter, a mixture of tolerance and indifference that would no doubt prove deadly to a dozen or so more of his club's patrons. A new performer was on stage, and Sam decided he would take his time with his pint and force Gene to endure just a little more ear-splitting chaos if only to assuage his own disappointment.

But if he was to get any sadistic satisfaction, it was surely not going to be this afternoon. Unexpected, jarring his senses, a strangely symphonic echo of strings wound their way gracefully within the smoky gloom of the Underground, cleansing the dirt and grime, restructuring the landscape with long, mournful notes. Sam's eyes found the stage, where he was surprised to see a slim woman with a long mane of red hair draped like silk over the neck of a cello, her hands moving over it in loving caresses, pulling despair from its stern, round body.

"This certainly is a place of surprises," Sam said into his pint. He took another bitter sip and decided he'd had enough. There were enough sludged fingerprints on the glass to contain all manner viruses and he wasn't keen on showing up puking with flu the next morning. "I guess we've accomplished all that's going to be done here. We'll head back to the station, check over the notes and see if we can pinpoint exactly where the stuff might have come from. If we can locate the original dealer, we can press him for the bigger guns, for his suppliers." Sam nodded at his partner. "Gov?"

Gene remained rigid in his seat, an unhealthy silence emanating from him that left Sam both bewildered and concerned. He narrowed his eyes at him, shocked by Gene's sudden immobility. Gene's gaze was transfixed on the stage, his jaw clenched in determination. Notes from the cello became shorter, then longer, an alchemical mixture of sadness and hope riding the crest of smoke that obscured the air of the Underground into shadows. The performer's hair was wild about her shoulders, a blood red hue that spilled around her pale, sharp features, messily framing a delicate but strong profile. Her fingers worked over the cello in ever ascending levels of complexity, notes swallowed by the darkness that took them in. The hush that had fallen over the club had been well deserved. This was no punk dabbler, no beginning artist with some obscure grind to prove. This was a master of her craft. This was utter genius. Witchcraft.

"Gene?" Sam whispered this time, and Gene held up his hand. Silence. Stop.

His DCI was in a trance, held in by the siren call of a masterfully played cello, a supernatural rapture overtaking him. Sam frowned, wondering what this new piece of the Gene puzzle might mean, a grain of his soul he'd normally kept hidden now exposed. A sickening feeling hit Sam deep in the gut, an understanding that was akin to regret. He'd misjudged the man—Gene Hunt could be taught after all.

The performance drew to a close, the cellist sighing against the dying notes of her instrument like a lover, her mouth half open in an uneasy smile. The final note faded slowly, the silence of the club respecting its demise.

Her red lips parted in a sultry whisper, her voice thick with an accent Sam immediately recognized as Russian. "Thank you," she hoarsely whispered, "Thank you for your patience and your time."

A respectful silence remained in the wake of her words, the weight of them melting into the walls, changing the very character of the building. She was so out of place here, so much like a hallucination that Sam wondered if he'd imagined the entire scene. She was a metaphor for his own situation, that had to be the answer—She was a misplaced jewel in the muck. In this dream within a dream he had to actually be asleep at his dingy metal desk at the station and any second now Gene Hunt was going to slam his fist on the desk's surface and shock Sam into what he currently understood as wakefulness. Which is exactly what Gene did, in a sense...

A sudden cacophony of whoops and stomps erupted through the silence in the club, smoke dispelled to make way for the bellow, somber shadows retreating far back from this red-faced, impassioned, hollering, stomping, clapping Godzilla who whistled loudly through his teeth, punctuating his joy with such succinct phrases as: "Bloody well angelic, that's what that is you useless drugged out bastards!" His index fingers went deep into both cheeks and a piercing whistle cleansed the gloom from the air. "That's how it's done, you miserable punters!"

"Wow," Sam said, uncomfortable beneath the glaring looks Gene's spectacle created. "I never took you to be so cultured."

"Oh, I'm full of surprises, me," Gene said. He stood up unevenly and began waving like a madman at the stage. "Hey! Hey!"

Sam grabbed him by the shoulder. "All right, enough, we're out of here."

"No!" Gene shouted at the stage. "Don't pack it in yet! Encore, love, ENCORE!"

With some help from the barman and a considerable struggle, Gene was wrestled out of the confines of the dark basement and was tossed unceremoniously out into the glaring light of a sunny afternoon. Gene blinked into it as though a spell had been broken, and Sam remained cautious beside him, waiting for Gene's explosive temper to find its mark.

Gene was quiet. He took a few deep breaths of heavily polluted Manchester air and looked over his shoulder quizzically at the rusty sign that said, simply: 'Underground'.

"Who is she?" Gene asked, the question clearly for himself alone.

/

The station was in complete chaos when Gene and Sam returned, a very frazzled Chris meeting Sam at the door to the desk office. "I caught him up the backside of that junkie hang out you put in your notes," Chris said, breathless with eager excitement. "He's a dealer."

Sam gave Gene a knowing glance, and Gene leveled his glare down at Chris. "Where's he at?"

"Cell two. Ray's with him."

"Great work, Chris. Did you send a sample off to forensics for analysis?" Sam replied.

Chris gave Sam a blank, smiling stare in return. He glanced from Sam to Gene and then back again, clearly searching for an impossible clue. "Um...Send them what, gov?"

It was Sam's turn to be confused. "The heroin, Chris. You said he's a dealer."

"Weren't no drugs on him, boss," Chris said, shrugging. "He just sort of matched the description you had writ down for us."

Sam felt a sick feeling well in the pit of his stomach. The wave of nausea crept outwards and along his spine, invading a space where his head met his neck. He rubbed at it, and frowned at Chris. "He 'sort of' matched the description, and he has no drugs on him. So, what did you charge him with?"

Chris stumbled over his words as he spoke. "Um...Suspicion?"

"Of what?"

"Um...Drugs and...stuff."

Sam's face wearily fell into his hands as he tried to rub the feeling of nausea out of his system. "Cut him loose, Chris."

"But..."

"You don't even know for sure if he's a dealer."

"Hold on, don't go running off to the races yet," Gene said. "You wanted to talk to the locals about their crop, now's your opportunity to chat over the almanac. Get that punter into the interview room—If we're going to waste our time we ought to do it properly, am I right DI Tyler?"

Sam groaned in defeat, and gave Chris a resigned wave. "Go on, bring him in."

"Dunno if I can, boss," Chris said. "He can't walk too well."

"What do you mean?" Sam asked.

His answer came with Ray, who had a painfully thin young man in his grip and was dragging him towards Sam. "Hey! Were you lot looking for this?"

The young man was doubled over, his arms hugging his abdomen, an expression of intense pain overtaking every inch of his body. "Damn you, Ray," Sam said, "If you did this..."

"I didn't touch him," Ray said, smacking his gum. "He was like that when we found him." He gave the suspected drug dealer a push forward, and grinned when the movement caused him pain. "They call him Picky Nicky," Ray said.

"She...she..." Picky Nicky began.

"Who?" Sam asked.

"The slag," Picky Nicky said, in a broken Glasgow accent. "Bloody commie red cello player. Kicked me in the crotch. Oh..damn, it hurts..."

Gene's interest was suddenly piqued. "Cello player...Like the bird what plays at the Underground?"

Picky Nicky had lost the ability to speak. He could only give Gene a strained nod.

"I see. So, you're not just an opportunistic junk dealer selling poison to your fellow man, you're also a punter who likes hassling helpless women. That must have been one heck of a kick, you look like she shattered your balls. Kind of makes me wonder, just what did you do to warrant it?"

"Bloody commie red bitch..." Picky Nicky replied.

Gene punched him across the face, the smack echoing down the corridor. Sam inwardly groaned. There went any hope of obtaining information about the heroin supplier.

"That's for my appreciation of the arts," Gene said.

/

"I simply wish to know why I am here."

Sam's arms were crossed, the missed opportunity to tighten the net against the bad heroin supplier still grating against his nerves. He rubbed the back of his neck, a dull ache still within it. He felt sick about the whole thing, and all he really wanted to do was just crawl into bed, any bed, and hope to god he could get rid of this damned headache.

"I've been wondering the same thing myself," Sam said.

The woman who had so captivated Gene's attention stood at the entrance to Gene's office. Droplets of blood had dried near the door, residual evidence of the punch he'd landed on Picky Nicky earlier in the day. She glanced at the droplets, and shook her mane of red hair away from her face and past her shoulders where it haphazardly clung to her back. Her sharp eyes seemed to soak everything of her surroundings into them, from the cheap cut of Sam's leather jacket to the piles of strewn papers to the Gary Cooper poster that adorned the corner of Gene's office wall. She's at ease here, Sam thought. She's familiar with this routine, with interrogations.

"Never mind the boy wonder," Gene said, shoving Sam aside. "Clearly, they don't have a proper appreciation for good manners where he comes from. Go on Sam, get the lady a chair and bring it into my office." Gene leaned towards Sam, and Sam caught a whiff of hastily applied Old Spice. As he guided her into his office, Gene's hand hovered at the small of their 'witness's back, as though he were afraid to touch the lightweight silk she wore. As Sam got her a chair and clumsily made his way into Gene's office after her, he couldn't help but appreciate that the dark red and black hues of her outfit contrasted sharply with the spectral pallor of her skin. She was like a ghost. Perhaps Gene's apprehension was due to the fear his hand would pass straight through her, and whatever fantasy she represented to him might dissipate like smoke.

"An altercation of that sort is always a frightening thing for a civilian," Gene said, shoulders back, posture straight as he moved behind his desk to his chair. A jar of Old Spice was in plain sight on the corner of his desk. His tie was neater, Sam noted with some interest. His shirt was less rumpled, his hair was neatly combed. Gene bid his guest to sit down on the chair offered to her, and only followed suit afterwards.

Impossible as it was to believe, Gene Hunt was acting the part of the perfect gentleman.

Their guest rested her elbow on the edge of Gene's desk, and Gene's fingertips dared to brush against the skin of her arm only to draw away slightly from the tease of the touch. "I understand the event was traumatic for you," he said, his voice on a level of calm that made Sam wonder if Gene's body had been overtaken by some alien Lothario, "but as a victim of a crime, it's very important that we get all the facts. Now, why don't we start with your name?"

"Moira," she said, smiling wryly. "And the facts are, there has been no crime."

"It's perfectly natural to be afraid," Gene said, and he left his chair to saunter to the edge of his desk, where he sat directly in front of her. His voice had a dreamy, calm quality to it that bespoke of whispered endearments, of hearts that beat too fast and a world too slow to catch up to them. "A woman shouldn't have to endure such predicaments, it's up to us coppers to keep you safe." He took her hand in his and gave it a gentle, reassuring squeeze.

Sam bent towards him, and whispered hoarsely into Gene's ear. "I'll go get some candles and a bottle of wine."

Gene's posture instantly stiffened.

"...bastard..." he said grittily through his teeth.

"I beg your pardon?" Moira said.

"Nothing, my dear, nothing. Just talking to my juniour officer, Sam Tyler. He's fresh on the force, out of training yesterday, a right rookie he is. Practically in nappies..." Gene gave her an ingenuine grin. "Doesn't have a clue about proper procedures..."

Moira gave Gene a small smile and withdrew her hand from his grip. "He has no need to know, because I am not pressing any charges. I am sorry, but you are wasting your time Mr...?"

"Hunt. DCI Gene Hunt. Such a pleasure to meet you Moorra."

"Moira."

"Mwa-rah."

"That's slightly better," she replied, unconvinced.

"Your accent, it's Russian," Sam interrupted. He gained an angry glare from Gene in return. "Where were you born?"

"Psikushka," she replied, and gave Sam a warm smile.

"Nosy Parker," Gene muttered.

"Your juniour officer has a very efficient personality." She narrowed her eyes, "I'm not so sure I like that."

Sensing an uneasy edge overtaking the mood that he hadn't wanted to germinate, Gene eagerly grabbed Moira's hand in his again to bring his own concerns to light. His tiny office was charged with his testosterone libido. "I know what's on your mind. You want to ask me if we've met before."

"I wasn't going to ask you," she said, and struggled a little to pull her hand out of his.

"I met you at the Underground. You were playing the cello and..."

"Oh yes," Moira replied, uneasily. "I do remember you."

"You really know your craft," Gene said, genuine in his praise. "You got great form, top notch."

"Thank you."

"Better than bloody Mario Lanza. Can't hold a candle to him."

"Mario Lanza is an opera singer," Sam said.

"I know that, Sam," Gene said, again gritty, again through his teeth.

"Opera, cello—both classical mediums and very different in application, enough to not be comparable. Such as, say, a DCI compared to a Naval Captain—Kind of sort of the same thing, only one of them knows how to swim."

"Don't you have some hot chocolate to make?" Gene growled.

"Coffee, Gene."

"I would adore some," their esteemed guest said.

"Hear that, Juniour? Go and percolate."

"Gov," Sam said through his own strained smile. "A word."

"There, you see, can't even make a cuppa on his own. Like I said—Nappies."

He let Moira's hand drop and he calmly left his office, with Sam in the lead. He closed the door behind him gently, as though Moira was sleeping and he didn't want to disturb her dreams.

Once outside, he grabbed Sam by the lapels of his leather jacket and slammed him against the far wall. Broken blinds bit into the back of Sam's skull, making his headache spike into an eruption of sharp pain. Gene loomed over him, a dab of shouted spit landing on Sam's brow.

"What the hell are you doing to me in there?"

Sam shook him off. "I'm trying to prevent you from making a total ass of yourself. Clearly, a futile exercise."

"She's a material witness. A victim of assault, a citizen whom a crime has been committed against, and therefore someone of interest to me."

"Those last few words sound about right, but I'm not too sure about the rest."

"I'm warning you," Gene glowered at Sam. "Stay out of my way."

Sam raised his hands in mock arrest. "Fine. Dig your own grave. Only I'm not going to be party to you using your position as an impromptu dating service."

Gene stormed back into his office, only to halt in mid stride to make his appearance a little less threatening and considerably more restrained gentleman. He sat down in his chair across from Moira, and gave her his most charming smile. "Sorry about that. Where were we?"

"I am leaving," Moira announced. She stood up, much to Gene's dismay.

"I can understand you don't want to press charges," Gene said, in his last ditch effort to be her chivalrous knight in shining armour. "Girl like you, on your own, being your own creative boss. Like I said, it's all right to be afraid of repercussions..."

"I'm not afraid," Moira said.

"I'm just saying," Gene said, pressing his point. "A beautiful woman like you, talented, refined—You're not from around here, you don't know your way around this city like I do, you don't get its dangers. Manchester can be a right cesspit if you don't have anyone to look out for you, and if you need a friend, say...A smattering of kindness..."

"Kindness?" Moira said, suddenly cold. "I have no need of such things."

She walked to where he was sitting and in one, graceful, fluid movement brought a dangerously stiletto foot to rest on his inner thigh. Her black silk skirt had risen above her knee, revealing pale, white legs devoid of stockings. The heel of her black stiletto pressed down, and Gene visibly reddened, though it was unclear if it was due to the nearness of her body to his, or the inference that she could so easily inflict pain.

"These are the shoes I was wearing when I took care of my little problem. You tell me, DCI, Mr. Gene Hunt—Do these shoes betray a sense of 'kindness' to you?"

"N-Not really," Gene said, in a voice too small to really be his.

Moira giggled into her palm. She took her stiletto out of Gene's lap and gracefully stood confident with both feet firmly on the ground. Her icy demeanor had melted as easily as it had arrived.

"Your face is so red," she said to Gene, her hand coyly hiding her mirth. "He is blushing. How very cute."


	2. Chapter 2

MAD RUSSIAN—chapter two

"Psikushka."

"Gesundheit," Gene said to Sam. He clasped his hands behind his head and leaned back in his chair. Moira's stunt with the stiletto had done nothing to ease the machismo of Gene's attitude, and in fact had only increased it. He'd been made a fool of, Sam thought, and he's too full of himself figure that out.

"There is no such city in Russia," Sam said. "It's not a real place, just a description of one."

Gene rocked back and forth in his chair, Sam reduced to an invisible speck somewhere in his eye's periphery.

"Psikushka is a derogatory Russian term for psychiatric hospital," Sam continued. "More specifically, a psychiatric prison for political dissidents." Sam's voice became more animated, a restrained passion eking its way towards Gene. "I wrote an essay on it for my history class in middle school," he said. The memory brought a smile with it. The essay had earned him high marks and was passed around as an example of perfect form, a fact which had gotten the crap kicked out of him later on that day by those who had been the 'bad' example, but still...The realization his brains were worth something had given him a confidence he hadn't known before, a confidence that had come in handy in his investigative work. Granted, the residual rage leftover from being bullied had been an unexpected help as well.

"In 1971, just two years ago, former Psikushka prisoner Vladimir Bukovsky smuggled out one hundred and fifty pages of well documented abuse from Soviet psychiatric institutions."

Gene yawned, and scratched the underside of his chin.

"I can't imagine the suffering she went through," Sam continued. "I mean, current psychiatric practices here in the UK are bad enough, but to think of the mind control experiments, the sensory deprivations, the drug induced states of disassociation, not to mention the actual physical abuse—I have to say, I'm glad she burned that bridge you tried to build. She's no doubt unbalanced thanks to all the torture she'd had to endure at the hands of Soviet psychiatrists. She's emotionally fragile, clearly manic. She could be suffering from PTSD, or could she have a bipolar disorder as a result of brain damage thanks to the inhuman practice of giving sane people seizure inducing drugs and repeated, unnecessary applications of electric shock therapy. No, life with her would be a string of suicide attempts, panic attacks, psychotic delusions, paranoia. There's no way you would be able to handle any of that—Her problems are way beyond anything you could comprehend."

Gene was silent as he tipped his chair onto its two back legs, his eyes roving the ceiling, precariously balanced as he looked past the steel metal support beams that held the building together.

"Did you hear what she said?" Gene asked Sam.

He tipped the chair forward, where it landed with a loud bang that echoed through his office and nearly knocked down his Gary Cooper poster. "She said I was cute!"

Sam stared blankly back at Gene's grinning face.

"You didn't hear a word I said, did you?" Sam said.

"What, you flapping your gums again?"

The ignorant bastard, Sam thought. The arrogance of him, the utter stupidity...Sam clenched and unclenched his fists in frustration, and though he knew the blow was a low one, he couldn't let this disaster evolve no matter how stubborn Gene was about the matter.

"You're a married man," Sam reminded him.

Gene fished out a cigarette from his side pocket and lit it with his hands cupped around his lighter. He took a few quick experimental puffs before filling his lungs properly with poison and with a decided arrogance he blew his smoke in Sam's direction.

"And you're not my wife," Gene said to him. "So piss off and mind your own."

An aura of uncertainty had crept into Gene's office, and Sam seized on it. "You know nothing about that woman," Sam said to Gene. "You were so busy playing Romeo you forgot to get her last name. You have no idea what she was doing at the Underground in the first place, and you haven't a clue as to where she lives."

Gene stubbed out his nearly spent cigarette and practically bolted out of his chair. "Bloody hell. You're right." He slid his camel coat on and loosened his wide tie. "I have to head back to that club, get an address out of that barman—I'm sure a few pounds ought to loosen his confidentiality."

"Gov," Sam said, shaking his head. "Have you gone mad? It's bad enough you brought her here for an interview under false pretenses, now you're going to start stalking her—I don't know what fantasy game you're playing at here, but to do this to your wife..."

"I'm telling you again," Gene said, his finger practically poking Sam in the eye. "Mind your own."

"I get it," Sam replied, incensed. "It's not a moral quandary as long as your dick is involved."

"It's not my fault the birds find me irresistible. Your little green eyed gherkin might not be seeing any action, but that's no reason to be judging mine." Gene swung his office door open with a bang. "Survival of the fittest, lad. And I'm as fit as they come."

Sam's face was twisted into an expression of sheer disgust. "You can't possibly think I'm jealous of you!"

"No need to weep in your frilly pillow over it. It's about time you learned the facts of life-- women aren't looking for sensitive, they want strength, something I've got in abundance. I'm just offering protection from the elements, a measure of support..."

"So you're saying I should just club them over the head and drag them by the hair into the cave?" Sam shook his head. "By God, you're an ass. I'm not jealous of you, I'm trying to stop you from pursuing disaster." Sam clenched his fists in frustration. "For God's sake, how could you not notice?"

Gene took a quiet, condescending drag of his cigarette. "Notice what?"

"Her arms," Sam said. "Just above her wrists. Dark circles, lines. She's a heroin addict, Gene. A regular user."

The silence that weighed the room down after this revelation was a physical being in the room with them, its cloying, unhappy presence winding its way around Sam's skull, giving him a sudden, horrific migraine. He winced beneath it, and rubbed at the base of his neck with his palm.

Gene stood in front of Sam, his back to him. He took a small puff of his cigarette, a halo of pollution surrounding him, the smell of burnt, cheap tobacco blotting out the sickly sweet smell of Old Spice cologne.

"So, what you're saying is, she's going to stomp on my heart with those killer heels of hers," Gene said.

"That's it exactly," Sam replied.

Gene stubbed out his cigarette into a nearby ashtray. He wouldn't look at Sam.

"I'm getting her address," he said with finality.

Sam groaned in resignation at this disastrous decision. "So, now that she's clearly unsuited to your imagination, you're going to treat her like a criminal, like a common drug addict."

"I got my work to do," Gene said, darkly. "You get cracking on yours."

/

Annie's hands were firmly pressed against her ears, the racket in the Underground unfit for human acoustics. Sam waved madly at her from the crowded bar, and shouted her name. It was lost on the strangled cries ripping out of the stage, her name dropping to the floor of the club, where it was trampled by worn shoes and glitter. Her lips were forming a single word, and it was only through her own force that she managed to keep his name above the din. 'Sam', she mouthed. 'Sam!'

His decision to return here this evening was only a marginal excuse in his investigation into the bad heroin. This was where it had originally been sold, and with any luck they'd find a few wayward souls with a story to tell.

Sam was pushed from behind, and his stomach hit the bar with enough force to cause nausea. He rubbed at the sickly feeling in his stomach, and tried to ignore the incessant pounding in his head that hadn't let up since morning. This certainly wasn't the 'fun' club he'd enjoyed with Annie once before—This place was loud, industrial and aggressive, rampant drug use visible in every mad rant hollered past the din, the dance floor transparent with hedonism. Sam caught a glimpse of the top of Annie's head near a staircase situated in an area near the loo. Junkies were huddled together there, needles carelessly dangling from their arms as they took their hit. This wasn't the era of hiding one's path to self-destruction, Sam had to remind himself. Drug use was still a badge of bohemian honour. Some of these people would clean up and leave their crazy chemical experimentations behind. They'd become barristers, doctors, mothers, husbands. The past would be forgotten, save for some snippets of crazy memories that would serve as fodder for tales of misspent youth and would be laughed at over dinner parties, heads shaking at the utter shock that they'd managed to survive their own stupidity.

Then it would creep in. That head cold that wouldn't go away, that would mysteriously turn into pneumonia, then attack the body in ways it wasn't meant to. Tiny infections would become deadly. The body would break out in sores, muscle and flesh would waste away, leaving thin skin and the glassy eyed stare of the dying behind.

Sam shuddered, and swallowed down the nausea that threatened to overtake him. A greasy mug of beer suddenly appeared before him, and Sam looked up to see the Scottish, bald, bushy-browed benefactor glaring down at him.

"Getting a bit tired of seeing your faces," he said. "Where's that bastard you hover about with?"

Sam took the mug of beer and wondered if it was wise to drink it, especially considering the barman's current unfriendly mood. "I suspect he's gone to visit Moira," Sam said. "You did give him the address, of course."

The barman shrugged. "What does it matter to me?"

"Since her privacy is of so little import to you, perhaps you could give me the address as well?" Sam winced as his headache gave another spike. He pulled his pen and notebook out of his side pocket and slid both to the barman. There was no point trying to hear him over the din. "Write it neatly so I don't have to come back here with an order to shut you down. There's enough open drug use in this place to open a chemist's."

"Hmph. You sound just like your mate," the barman replied gruffly. He scribbled down Moira's address and tossed Sam's notebook back at him. "I got news for you, since you've been so damned gracious. You've got some manners to you, not like that lout you're looking out for. That bad apple you're trying to pick—Word is he got in past the iron curtain. Russian supplier. Couple of my regulars got into a row with him last week because he refused to sell to them. They call him Vlad the Bad." The barman leaned closer to Sam, making sure he heard him. "Picky Nicky is the one you want. He's bosom pals with the bastard, and he's the one who sold his wares to those dead triplets of yours."

'Damn,' Sam thought. 'We'd had him after all.'

He also had a reason as to why Moira was so quick to walk away from the thought of assault charges against him. Picky Nicky was her drug supplier,and the altercation was no doubt over the fact he'd tried to sell her damaged goods. Then again, Sam thought with sickening apprehension, perhaps he did sell it to her, without her knowledge, and if that was the case...

"Where can I find him?" Sam asked. "Picky Nicky, where is he?"

"Don't rightly know," the barman shrugged. "He used to hole up in a crate down the dockside, but the coppers banged him up good and chased him off. He's like a rat, comfortable anywhere there's an alley and garbage to eat. Word is, he travels fast when he moves—He could be halfway to Glasgow as we speak."

"Thanks," Sam said, visibly dismayed as he pocketed his notebook. The barman continued to glare down at him.

"Well, you got what you want, and my insurance is paid up for the remainder of the year. Got that?"

Sam refused to answer him.

"Nobody's keen on your sort around here. Maybe you should get lost. Very lost."

Sam slunk away from the bar, leaving his untouched pint behind. He made his way towards Annie who was at the stairs near the loo. Dear God, he felt nauseous. He clutched at his head and took a quick look at the stage where an artist performed wearing nothing save shades of green glitter, paint and coloured tissue paper. From the performer's sickly thin figure and well placed paper mache, it was impossible to tell if they were truly male or female.

He made his way to the stairs and immediately caught a glimpse of two users huddled beneath it. One pulled a needle out of her vein and passed it, dripping with her blood to the man who may or may not be her boyfriend. He was well groomed, and used an alcohol swab on his skin before sinking the used needle into the crook of his arm.

Three more fellow users were waiting their turn.

"Jesus," Sam said, under his breath.

"You the copper?" the original user asked him. "The one with that girl?" She gave Sam a strangely innocent smile, not something he was use to seeing on hard core addict. "She's real nice, easy to talk to. Wish there was more out there like her." Blond plaits hung in front of her eyes, her face too scrubbed and clean to be one of the doomed. "Those three that got the rotten stuff...It's odd, you know."

Sam frowned. "What do you mean?"

"They didn't have no friends, I don't even think they liked each other. Wouldn't talk to anyone else, though, kept to themselves, like, real close knit, like they was caged. They just showed up around here, drifted in like pollen. That one, the youngest of the three—He said he was from Glasgow but he was off, you know?"

Sam shook his head. No, he didn't understand.

"He didn't sound like he was properly from Glasgow. Way he talked was all off." The girl's fresh face lazily transformed into a dreamy smile. "Oh, hey Annie. I got what you were looking for."

Annie's hand appeared over Sam's shoulder, her reach like an eager embrace. "Thanks, Alice, and good luck with that MBA you're working on," Annie said, taking the needle from the girl's grasp. "Ta, this'll really be...Ouch. Oh, damn, I pricked me thumb."

The universe became compact, a tiny bubble of blood that lay between the ridged prints of Annie's thumb. Sam felt his actions were performed in slow motion, his hand grabbing a pint out of a stranger's grasp, the way the beer sloshed slowly out of it, over Annie's injury, ale soaking her pants. He plucked the needle from her shocked grasp and the moment accelerated with Sam's panicked heart, his hand a death grip on her arm as he pulled her towards the loo, ignoring her protests and struggle to get away. He swung the door of the loo open, a filthy, greasy film pasted on its walls, the mirror smeared with a substance that was possibly fecal matter. There were no patrons here—It was too marked for disease for even a hard core junkie's presence

Unthinking, he ran the hot water to scalding and put Annie's hand under it.

"Stoppit!" Annie screamed. "You're burning me, stoppit!"

Annie pulled her hand free, the skin raw and red. For a moment Sam thought she was going to slap him, but the panic he exuded when he looked on her kicked an empathetic trigger instead.

"Sam, what's going on?"

Sam felt a sick knot in his throat. He'd just inexplicably tossed a beer on her and had dragged her into a disgusting sewer of a washroom to shove her hand under scalding hot water and here she was, staring at him with such kindness and concern, instantly forgiving the fact he'd acted a madman. The yeast smell of the ale he'd spilled wafted from her, mingling with the foul air in the loo. She was so vulnerable, Sam realized. So naive, innocent of the kinds of dangers even a scratch could present.

Sam wiped his sweating brow with the back of his hand, his head positively pounding. He felt sick to his stomach, and he to ease the tension in his gut he leaned over the filthy sink in front of him. The offending needle was still in his hand. He took a pencil out of his pocket, and pulled the pink rubber off of the end of it then pierced it with the needle. Not the most failsafe method of preventing further injury, but it would have to do.

"Annie, I don't know if what I did was enough. The first case...I can't rightly remember when it showed up, but I know it was hovering around at this time, it was laying in wait." He collapsed over the sink, his head sick with pain. "If we were in my time, you could get tested right away, you'd be given an antiretroviral treatment."

"Sam, what are you on about?" Annie said, her eyes soft. She cheerfully shrugged off his concern. "It's just a little pinch, it's not going to kill me."

He could feel tears burning behind his eyes, and he did his best to blink them back. "Maybe not," he said, trying to hold onto hope. "Annie, it's not so simple—It's already started, it's got its roots in. Nobody knows it's here, it has all the freedom it needs to move across the globe. At this moment, at this second right now, it's got seven years, Annie, to silently germinate, and by the time 1981 rolls around, over one hundred thousand to three hundred thousand will be infected." Sick, sick, he felt so sick, especially with Annie looking at him with that concerned need to protect him from his own fears, completely ignorant that they were valid. "A real plague is coming. It'll kill millions of people, Annie. Do you understand? Millions."

But she couldn't. She put her arm around his shoulders and guided him out of the loo. "You don't look so good, Sam," she said, calmly. "Let's get out of here and get you some fresh air."

"I can't stop it from happening," Sam said, his voice small, cracked. "Intravenous drug use was one of the more common paths to infection." He held his aching head in his hands as Annie led him to the car outside. "I think you'll be safe, Annie. I can't be sure. I hope you're safe. Annie, I'm so sorry. I know you'll be safe..."

A choked sob escaped him.

"I'm not certain..."

"My God, Sam, you're a right mess. You sure no one tossed a bit of something psychedelic into your pint?"

Sam leaned on the hood of the car, and took deep, shaky but grateful breaths of the cool night air. Despair in every movement, he reached into his pocket to take out a set of car keys, and dropped his notebook as he did so. He picked it up and smoothed his thumb over the name and address on the top crumpled page, the one he had asked the barman to write down.

His skull felt like someone was slowly cracking it beneath a vice. Gene was no doubt already there, throwing himself in front of that lorry.

"I've got to arrest the driver," Sam murmered.

"What's that, Sam?" Annie asked, cheerful.

"Annie, I'll drop you at the station. Wake up forensics, tell them to get this syringe tested." He held it gingerly in front of him. "Tell them to handle it very, very carefully, to wear gloves and at all costs avoid exposure to its contents."

"Sam," Annie said, her cheerfullness turned to real worry. She nervously rubbed her thumb against her palm. "Is it really that bad?"

He couldn't answer her.

"I need the results yesterday." He got into the driver's seat, and Annie slid silently into the car beside him, her eyes still hooded with concern.

"You sure you're all right?" Annie asked.

No, he wanted to say to her.

"There's somewhere I have to go first," he said, by way of explanation. "I'll meet you at the station in about an hour."


	3. Chapter 3

MAD RUSSIAN—chapter three

Sam brought the car to a slow rolling stop just inside the alley, a dull mist playing across the wet darkness in film noir hues. He peered through his windshield up at the various windows that lined the walls of the alley, counting them off to find the one that was Moira's flat. A medium sized window lay just above an ironwork fire escape, and the lights within were on. Shadows moved across the ceiling. Sam checked his watch. Just past midnight, two hours spent since he'd dropped Annie off at the station.

He hoped he wasn't too late.

He turned off the ignition and got out of the car, keys held close in his palm so as not to jangle them and betray his presence If her flat was as soundproof as his own, all Moira had to do was cough lightly into her fist to tell him she was home. With steps as soft as a cat's, he climbed his way up the ironwork stairs, the cold, wet rungs testing the very concept of safety they professed to provide.

"I thought everything had been made clear at the station," he heard Moira say, her voice drifting through the half open window of her flat.

He paused at the third floor window, gaining a direct view into her tiny flat. It consisted of little else save a galley kitchen, a wooden chair and table that had clearly been rescued from the Underground and a full sized ironwork bed that lay conspicuously central in the area that was supposed to be her living space, its covers clean and neatly made, its arrangement only a foot away from her fridge. Propped against the head of her bed was her cello, its long neck kissing her pillow, her sole steadfast lover who comforted her miserable living space. The cello added an unexpected dignity to her poverty. It made her squalor noble. Spiritual.

"There's a few things what need ironing out," a deep voice cut into the room. Gene was visible now, making his way into the kitchen, his hands deep in the pockets of his camel coat. He was an imposing figure in the tiny space, and he towered over Moira as he began opening cupboards, drawers, his hands idly turning over bits of paper with music notes scribbled on them. He took her plates out of her cupboard one by one, inspecting them carefully, as though he could discern all of her secrets out of the cheap, mismatched ceramics.

Moira leaned against the entrance to her kitchen, a blue silk dressing gown hiding everything essential, a long brown cigarette held daintily upwards with equally long and strong fingers. There was no question in her eyes as she watched Gene pull down chipped wine glasses and ugly yellow flowered mugs, and left them to litter her kitchen counter. She was completely unperturbed by this invasion of her privacy.

"You weren't telling the truth," Gene said. He took an oddly shaped pot out of the cupboard, a flowered construction of tin that had a long handle and tapered off into a spout at one end. He frowned at it and turned it over and around in his grip, clearly trying to discern its purpose.

"For coffee," she explained. "We Russians make it very sweet, and very strong."

"Hn," Gene replied, and placed it on the counter top to meet her other meager possessions. He turned his attentions on her. "Psikushka means nuthouse."

She narrowed her eyes at him and took a guarded drag of her cigarette. "Who is to say I wasn't born in one?"

"I can't imagine it was all that charming a childhood," Gene said.

Moira flicked ashes into a small metal tin on the edge of her kitchen table. "This little drawer I am living in now is sheer paradise. What does that tell you?"

Gene's hand met the door of Moira's fridge, and Sam watched as she turned away, her cigarette meeting her lips. Gene caught her apprehension, and his grip on the fridge door handle tightened.

"I take it you have something to tell me," he said.

"There is nothing to say, you have all your answers already."

Gene opened the fridge door, and bent into it, a nasty crashing of bottles and steel cascading within it. A large bottle of domestic vodka rolled onto the floor, followed by an even larger bottle of red wine, a half mickey of gin and about four bottles of flat tonic. His hand tossed a rather sad looking head of cabbage onto her kitchen counter, accompanied by a very moldy loaf of bread.

"Quite a bit of the booze," Gene said.

"I am Russian," she admitted, shrugging.

Gene paused, and then stood up from the fridge, a wooden box in his hand. He slammed the fridge door shut and weighed the offending item from one hand to the other, his thumb picking at the brass clasp at its center, superficially locking it shut.

"Mind telling me what is in here?" he asked.

Moira took a long sigh from her cigarette. "My medicine," she said, in a haze of husky smoke, her face turned away from Gene's scrutiny.

Gene's thumb made the decision to open the Pandora's box for him as it pushed the brass clasp up, releasing the lock. He opened the wooden box like a book, his gaze taking in the neat row of glass needles on one side, a bottle of rubbing alcohol, heroin and cotton swabs on the other. As clean and perfect a junk kit as anyone could possibly find.

Gene took out the small bag of heroin and held it up to the light in the kitchen ceiling It was as though he wanted to convince himself it wasn't what he thought it was. He pursed his lips, and frowned over it, finally laying the box to rest between the mismatched plates and the three ugly coffee mugs on the kitchen counter.

He flicked at the baggie in his grip, studying it. His posture was slouched, an uncharacteristically defeated air about him. He paced the kitchen with the tiny packet in his hand, his fingers flicking at it in thought.

"I guess you take this because of that place. Because of all the shit that happened in Psikushka."

Moira's cigarette remained poised, ashes falling to the floor from its unsmoked tip. Gene raised his head and their eyes met. She stared at him with stony, predator daring, a cold assessment draining all feeling out.

"Yes," she said.

Gene palmed the kitchen counter, one hand on his hips. He tapped his fingers on its surface as he took in her meager possessions, her ash strewn floor, her little box of crime sitting next to a chipped porcelain sink.

"Does it help?" he asked her.

Moira rested her head against the entrance to the kitchen, a slight smile on her lips. The cold veneer that had overtaken her features only moments before had suddenly thawed, a strained vulnerability becoming visible.

"It doesn't help at all," she said to Gene.

Gene nodded, and placed both of his hands on his hips. "Fine. Then you won't mind if I keep it on me."

Moira shrugged. "You will do what you want anyway. What can I do about it?"

"It's not like that," Gene said. "There's a bad batch out there. Deadly business, killed three already. I just want to make sure you're safe."

"How noble of you," Moira said.

"Look, I'm just saying, a bird like you, on your own, putting yourself at risk like this. It's not right, you ought to have someone look out for you and right now that bloke is me."

Moria rolled her eyes and sighed in apparent boredom. "We are back to this again? Mr. Gene Hunt, much as I am in appreciation of your concerns for me, I assure you, I am very much capable of taking care of myself."

"Right," Gene said. "Like how you pump poison into your veins, hoping to forget that life is shite." He grabbed the packet out of his pocket and dangled it in front of her, his voice raised, angry. "This is criminal activity, right here. I could arrest you."

"Then go ahead," Moira dared.

Her stoicism left him momentarily un-nerved. Gene stepped back from her, giving her more respectable, less threatening space.

"I know what you're thinking," Gene said. "You're saying to yourself, what's a together bloke like me doing here, me with the ring on me finger, a respectable job where everyone looks up at me, sees me as the epitome of moral example..."

"In your dreams," Sam muttered at the window.

Gene stood over Moira, his posture rigid, his face unreadable as he spoke down to her. "I'll tell you why. Because this little gold ring on me finger—It don't mean nothing. It's all a bang up, a fraud."

He took the plain gold band off of his finger and shoved it into Moira's hand. "She left me a year ago. I didn't let those baboons know about it because like I said, I'm the good example. I'm the one who shows them how they can go home at the end of the day, and it isn't all shite, What would they think, those baboons, if they knew the missus had run off with the doctor what was prescribing for me blood pressure? The less they know about my ticker the better, and that's on every level."

Gene shook a crick out of the back of his neck, and stepped back from her, his former threatening posture dissolved. Confession seemed to make him smaller. "'Cause it's like this, see—They see my life fall apart, a together guy like me, and they know the gig's up. The job's going to do them in. I got to leave them the lie, Moira, I got to give them the bit of hope that they can go home at the end of the day to something that at least looks like normal."

He gave her an uncertain once over. "Look—You're right, this is a toss up. I'll see meself out."

"Gene," she said, and grabbed his arm, stopping him. Her eyes met his, and she caressed his cheek with the cool edge of the wedding band he had discarded into her palm. "We all have our secrets. It's our duty to ourselves to treasure them, and give them as gifts to those we feel worthy. I am honoured." he slid her hand across his chest, her long fingers tangling in the fabric of his wide, ugly tie. "Perhaps I should give you some of mine as fair exchange."

Gene visibly swallowed.

"I will tell you," she said, "of Sam Tyler's lumbar punctures."

"Go on," Gene said, his voice gravel, breathless.

Sam stood shocked at the window. "Hold on, did she just say my name?" he thought.

Moira's voice continued in its soft, breathy cadence, her hands moving over Gene's shoulders where she brought him into a femme fatale embrace. "Sam's lumbar punctures are a necessity, especially when considering the injuries he sustained. A long needle is inserted into his back, through the spine and into the spinal fluid."

Her lips reached towards Gene's ear, where she lightly kissed. "It is performed to obtain a small amount of cerebrospinal fluid, also know as CSF. There are risks with lumbar punctures, such as headaches and nausea, and a headache that persists and is quite severe, especially when sitting upright, this may be a sign of a cerebrospinal fluid leak at the puncture site." Her eyes closed as she rested her head on Gene's shoulder. "It is treated with bed rest, and in Sam Tyler's case as we see here, a blood patch is used wherein we use an injection of Sam's own blood into the site of the leak."

"Lumbar punctures..." Sam thought, and then, as though her words were needles, he felt the painful stab in his spine, the pain making him collapse to his knees on the cold metal stairs. It hit him in horrific waves, making his stomach clench in anticipation of another cramp of pain.

"And what then?" Gene asked, his voice a gruff whisper.

"It will clot and seal the puncture."

He felt sick, his hands white-knuckled on the sill, but the pain was slowly receding, leaving Sam disoriented as he pressed his cheek on the cool surface of the window's glass, his breath leaving a steamed circle upon it. Strangely, he didn't have a headache, just a lingering nausea that told him something had been done to him in that coma half-life so far removed from here, something that didn't feel quite right.

Gene's hands were on Moira's shoulders, his lips touching the softness of her red hair.

"I'm sorry," he whispered.

"Why?" she whispered back.

Gene's hands slid from her shoulders, to rest against the small of her back where he massaged gently. Moira put her hands on his arms, and softly broke the embrace.

"We shouldn't," she said.

Gene swallowed. "Yeah. Got it. Bit too fast on the hoof, ought to slow it down some."

"No," Moira said, smiling. "It is simply your juniour officer, the one as you say is in 'nappies'?" Moira gave Gene a sweet grin. "He is standing in my kitchen window."

"Oh, dammit!" Sam said, and tried to duck back.

Too late. Gene had spotted him.

"Excuse me," Gene said to Moira through a very strained, unnatural smile. He kept her in his sight as he backed up towards the window, that same strained expression of calm keeping his rage only marginally contained. He opened the window and stepped out of it onto the fire escape where Sam was waiting.

"Give me one good reason I shouldn't kill you after kicking you in the how's your father and tossing your undescended testicles into a meat grinder."

"I can explain," Sam began. "I was looking for the right moment to knock on the glass, get your attention, but then she started talking about cerebrospinal fluid and..."

"Sera-what? Are you mad?" Gene's face was a truly unhealthy shade of purple as he lunged at Sam. "I suppose you got a proper earful, did you? Got what you were looking for?" Gene grabbed Sam and shoved him against the rails of the stairs, where only through a quick grab was he able to stop himself hurtling over the edge and onto the black alley below. "I suppose it makes you feel better, getting one up on Gene Hunt, forcing me down to your level...I suppose you find it ab-so-lute-ly, posit-ive-ly fabulous. I got to hand it to you, Sam, you're not a fellow one can keep things from. You're a right KGB operative, you are."

Sam shoved him back with all the force he could muster. "Stop making it about me," Sam warned him. "It's not my fault your wife left you."

Gene raised his fist and Sam tensed, waiting for the blow to make its mark. It never did. Gene leaned against the iron stair railing instead, his face obscured in shadow. Sam sat on a cold rung, keeping his distance. A quiet overcame the air between them, a forgiven mist that brought the battle to a close.

"She really left you for your heart specialist?" Sam asked. "Metaphorically nasty, that."

"Whatever," Gene replied.

Sam felt cold on the stair rung, his mood depressed as he looked on Gene's profile in the dark. He was a proud man, Sam had to remind himself, a man who had built a protective bubble of ego around himself in a concrete mold of armor. Now it was cracked, crumbling in places, and little pieces of Gene's soul were starting to get exposed.

It was clear to Sam that contrary to his persona, Gene was a man who bruised easily.

"We went to the club," Sam said. He fought to keep his voice even as he spoke, the horror of what had happened to Annie still festering in his consciousness. "I had a little chat with the barman. He says Picky Nicky is our man." Sam stood up, and shrugged his leather jacket closer around him, fighting to keep out the chill. "He's got a Russian supplier. We get Picky Nicky, we get his supplier, we shut down the shop selling bad heroin and no more bodies end up in our morgue."

"Seems nicely sewn up," Gene said.

"We got a sample of heroin from the club," Sam said, "but I'm guaranteeing you it will be clean." He leveled his gaze at Gene. "I don't know what the game is yet, but there's something about this case that isn't sitting right with me."

Gene reached into his camel pocket and threw the small packet he had hidden there to Sam. "Give that a once over. I want to know if it's rotten." He turned and leveled a glare at Sam. "And keep it off the record as to where you found it."

Sam sighed. "I can't do that, Gene. It's evidence."

"It's baby powder until things are sorted out," Gene warned him.

"I'll give it twenty-four hours," Sam offered.

Gene nodded in terse approval, and slid away from the edge of the railing, to head towards the kitchen window. "Now bugger off."

"Gene."

"What, you can't hear?"

Sam cleared his throat and massaged the back of his head. It was truly impossible to broach the subject gracefully, so he took a deep breath and just began. "I know you and Moira, you've both got a bit of thing happening here. At least, well, there was a thing..."

"My thing is my business," Gene reminded him.

"Look, Gene..." Damn. He shook his head and took two packets out of his pocket and slapped them into Gene's palm. There. Accomplished. It had taken him ages to find them, and the only person who had any was a prostitute in one of the seediest areas of Manchester. She'd charged him three times the amount for them than her actual services.

Gene stared at the packets, uncomprehending.

"They're condoms," Sam said. "You know, for..."

"I bloody well know a rubber johnny when I see one!" Gene shouted at him. "What I don't know is why you just gave them to me!"

"Took me ages to find them this time of night," Sam said.

"Why? Were they all out of chocolates?" Gene's voice began to boom. "Are you out of your tree? You come out here, spying on me, discerning my deepest, darkest, personal secrets, and now you want to tell me how to shag? Sam Tyler, I will only tell you this once—Stay the bloody hell out of my bedroom!"

"Dammit, Gene, it's for your protection!"

"Oh, oh, it's so clear to me now. My protection, I see. Not a problem, Sam, the next time some murderous group of punters try to take me out, I'll just whip out my willie wallpaper and make short work of them." Gene tore open one of the packets and pulled the purple condom out. "Let's try their effectiveness now, shall we?"

He pulled it back in grasp, stretching it like a rubber band. He aimed it at Sam and then let it go, the condom zooming through the air like a missile. It caught Sam painfully on the cheek.

"Ow!"

"Sammy boy, you're right, it's one hell of a good weapon."

"Just answer me this," Sam said, rubbing the sting from his cheek. "Herpes, gonorrhea...Hell, why not add in syphilis...Are you willing to take the risk?"

Gene's posture became rigid, upright. He towered over Sam, his expression murderous. "If you are so much as breathing the suggestion that she is some sort of slag..."

"I'm saying you are," Sam said, incensed. He held up the remaining unopened packet. "She's an intravenous drug user. She could get pregnant, and you'd both have a lovely, bouncing baby heroin addict. I'm telling you this: Only an irresponsible, selfish prick would risk doing that to the woman he supposedly loves, so be a responsible jackass, and use a fucking condom!"

Gene's ire deflated slightly. He pouted over the package Sam shoved back into his hand.

"Of course, it has to be red," he muttered.

He glanced up at Sam. "You still here? Sorry, peep show's over!"

Sam gave Gene a cursory wave. Disappearing felt like a good plan. "I'll see you first thing in the morning."

"No need to wait up, Mother," Gene snapped.

"Good night, Gene."

"Piss off, Sam."

"Right."

Sam made a quick exit down the fire escape as Gene slid back into the flat through the kitchen window. Once at the car, he cast a glance back up at the flat, shadows moving across Moira's ceiling No matter what era you were in, or how much pain the world threw at you, there were some basic, primal remedies that could be considered universal.

He slid into the driver's seat and took out the packet of heroin Gene had handed to him. He gave it an uneasy, curious once over. Here was a puzzle piece with Moira attached to it.

Just where did she fit in with all of this?

He brought the car to life and made his way out of the alley, to drive back to the station. Perhaps the answer was already waiting for him.

He certainly hoped so.


	4. Chapter 4

MAD RUSSIAN—chapter four

Sam sat at his desk, the faces of three dead strangers staring back up at him. He had arranged the macabre portraits in a horizontal line, and he studied the faces of death before him—Two men, one woman, all without names, connections, friends. It seemed impossible that three people could be so isolated from their respective societies that no one would notice them missing, but perhaps it was easier to disappear in 1973. There weren't credit cards to trace, no cell phone to contact a dealer, no registered computer files of past offenses. His own salary was handed to him weekly in a small brown envelope as untraceable, cold and hard cash.

"Have we got any names yet?" he heard Annie's voice say over his shoulder.

Sam rubbed sleep from his eyes, and tensed at the near proximity of Annie's cheek against his ear. "No," he said to her. "Any word on how the search for Picky Nicky is going?"

"Chris and Ray are on it," Annie said, and shrugged. "Nothing yet."

He sighed and picked up the picture of the first victim, the young woman who had succumbed to the effects of the poisoned heroin. She looked about Annie's age, blond hair cut short, her eyes shut and her expression calm as though she had simply drifted into sleep His mind superimposed Annie's face on the victim's, the suffering she was possibly going to endure some unknown day in the future painted a far less attractive portrait.

"I got the results from forensics...They weren't happy to be getting up at one am, so promising them double bubble time was a good idea. It's a good thing you pushed it." She handed the resulting file to Sam, who opened it and ran his fingers along the chemical compositions that had been found in the samples. There were clear, deadly marked differences.

"The dope sample from the club, it's clean," Annie said. She sounded strangely relieved. "But the other sample, that one you brought in later, it's right nasty business. See here?" She pointed at one of the chemical names on the list. "Jerry—You know, Jerry, that nice new lab technician, the one who's all mad for Doctor Who?--He says it was cut with fentanyl, and a proper fatal amount, too."

Sam read the saturation amounts, a sickening feeling winding its way through his gut. "Annie, these numbers...There's no way anyone could have done this and thought it wouldn't kill. What we are looking at here is cold blooded murder."

"Hm. It's premeditated, all right." She cocked her head to one side. "Where did you get it?"

"I can't divulge my sources at present," Sam said.

"Oh," Annie replied, visibly hurt at being left out of the loop.

He picked up the small brown paper evidence bag and took out the small packet of heroin Gene had handed him the night before. The crystals within it glittered beneath the bare bulb dangling on a strained wire above his desk. Annie reached in and took out the needle she had obtained from the club, her eyes pensive as she inspected it.

"It wouldn't occur to me to do something like this to meself," she said, the needle's body held balanced between her thumb and forefinger. "I can't stand the things. I just about fainted when I got the smallpox vaccine."

"Smallpox," Sam said to himself. An ironic smile played on his lips. "Nobody gets that any more, the virus is officially dead." He glanced at the needle in Annie's grasp, and frowned as he took it from her, the pink rubber he had stubbed on its sharp point adding an uneven weight to it. "Unless, of course, you count Anthrax."

He inspected the needle's slender, plastic body. It was pristine and clean, not a trace of blood anywhere in its cylinder confines, no smudged fingerprints or oily residue on its surface. Nothing save a tiny amount of heroin crystals clogging the end. Its size was wrong, Sam thought. The needle's length was too short.

"Annie, that girl you got this from..."

"Alice?"

"Yeah." Sam bit his bottom lip, his eyes narrowed at the needle. "I dunno, maybe it was too dark to rightly see. I could have sworn she used a larger needle."

"She did," Annie said.

Sam blinked at her, uncomprehending. "Then where did this needle come from?"

"Me Aunt Fran," Annie cheerfully replied. "She's a diabetic." She plucked the needle from Sam's grasp and tossed it into the brown paper evidence bag. "I tell you, I'm happy the results were negative. I was really getting worried after the way you reacted last night—I thought I'd might have put strychnine in my bloodstream or some such what with the way you went mad. You're looking a might bit better today, Sam."

"You brought your own needle?" Sam asked her, his intense scrutiny making Annie nervous.

"'Course," Annie replied. "They weren't going to sell dope to a copper, and that's what I looked like to them right off. So, I just asked Alice to give me a very small sample. Told her it was to test for the bad dope making its rounds." Annie shrugged one shoulder and sighed. "Didn't seem to matter to her much. Shame, really, she's a smart girl otherwise, a nice enough sort."

"Annie," Sam said, suddenly quiet. "Are you saying that this needle has never been used?"

"Well, once," Annie said, and laughed. "When it popped in me thumb." She made a small fist and wiggled the offended digit at Sam.

Relief flooded through Sam's body in a palpable wave, his body and mind high on the adrenaline rush that good news brought with it. He gave Annie a smile that erupted right out of the very being of his soul.

"I've got some good news," Sam said to her.

"Oh?"

"Everything I said last night...Forget it. It's not going to happen—At least, not to you." His cheeks hurt, he was smiling at her so fervently. "You're going to be okay, Annie, I'm sure of it."

"Sam? Are you feeling all right?" Annie asked, her familiar concern creeping into her voice.

He stood up and grabbed her by the shoulders, a lovely warmth emanating from her and into his touch. "I couldn't feel better," he said to her, genuinely meaning it. "Annie, I'm so happy..."

"Give over, Sam, you're acting like a guy what's just won the lottery," Annie said, smiling. "It's not like you, all these positive vibes like those hippie folk say."

"I can be positive," Sam said to her, earnestly. He gave her shoulders a tender squeeze. "Annie...You have a long life ahead of you. A long and healthy life..."

"Sam?" Annie said.

"I don't know what I would have done if that hadn't become true," he admitted.

Annie glanced at his hand on her shoulder, and then turned her head to meet Sam's intent, uncompromising gaze. "Sam...Is there something you're wanting to tell me?"

He paused, not willing to let this moment of perfection go, to wallow just a few seconds longer in this bliss of relief in Annie's presence She was always there for him, he thought, the one person he could truly confide in and rely on. No judgment hovered behind her gaze, only warmth and often much needed sympathy had been offered him. If he could say he had a best friend in this place right now, he'd have to admit that person was Annie.

He took in the sweetness of Annie's face and wondered, not for the first time, what it would be like to cup her face in his hands and just take that kiss that was dying in the air between them.

"Sam," she said, her saying his name only increasing the spell. "I have to tell you..."

Sam's hand gave a slight pressure to Annie's shoulder, his eyes burrowing into hers, doing his best to telepathically project into her the tumultuous emotions he dared not openly express.

"I'm positively knackered," she admitted, still cheerful, clearly unaware of his joyous torment. "I've been up since early yesterday morning, I don't think I can stay on me feet for much longer."

"Annie...I..." Sam swallowed his feelings back, refusing to let them take over. It was madness to pursue this, and he let her shoulders go, his hands opening above them, fingers splayed, as though the digits had become springs.

"Go on home, go get some sleep," he said to her. His hands fell to his sides, the sudden abandonment of touch depressing them.

"Sam?" Annie cocked her head to one side and gave him a dazzling smile. "Are you blushing?"

Sam let out a small half laugh. "What? No. No I'm not."

"Oh, you are!" Annie exclaimed. "My God, we've both had it, I think. You should go grab something from the sandman yourself." She pinched his nose playfully. "Heh, your face is red as an apple. You look so cute."

He wanted to find joy in Annie's observation, but as she left him behind, a spring in her step as she left the office, an unhappy, if not downright miserable realization hit him with depressing ferocity. Sam checked his watch—It was six am, and he had a tiny bag of rotten heroin and three dead bodies in the morgue, none of them related save for their amazing skills of anonymity.

In a very short period of time, he would be leaving this station to head to Moira's tiny drawer of a flat where he would be forced to drag the insufferable DCI Gene Hunt kicking and screaming out of the arms of a mysterious Soviet ex-patriot.

His headache was back. Only it was worse than any lumbar puncture side effect—This migraine was strictly Gene-induced, and thus a hundred times worse than any medical nightmare. There was little difference between the two, save the fact that the medical one could be cured and Gene..Well, there simply wasn't a cure for dealing with unreasonable assholes. Sam would simply have to suffer his way through it.

/

Considering how his lower back was still sore from his last altercation with Gene at this address, Sam abandoned the subtle approach and decided to show up at the front door to Moira's flat. The hallway was a decrepit mess, wallpaper peeling off the walls, plaster moldy and cracking. Somewhere on the second floor, a man and a woman were screaming at one another in a language that sounded vaguely Welsh. Sam made a fist and rapped loudly on the door. Bits of white paint flecks shook loose from the door frame, raining onto the shoulders of his black leather jacket.

No answer. He knocked again, louder and more forcefully this time. "Gene?" he dared to say against the thin wood veneer.

The force of his knock, which wasn't much, crumbled the wood holding the lock in place. The front door of Moira's flat squeaked open on rusty hinges, releasing a cacophony of noise that could have been instrumental in knocking down the walls of Jericho, or in this case, the Berlin Wall.

Sam poked his head around the door, meekly glimpsing into the flat. The bed was the first thing in his line of sight, and while Moira was tucked neatly beneath the covers, nothing visible of her save her locks of red hair spilling in feathery softness onto her pillow, Gene was on his back, his mouth slack and slightly drooling, his arm carelessly dangling over the edge of the bed. He'd tossed off most of the covers, revealing the unfortunate revelation to Sam that Gene wore briefs, not boxers.

What was most disturbing, however, were the unbearable decibels that emitted from Gene's diaphragm and up through his nose and throat. It was the kind of deep, sonorous boom that killer whales used to call each other home.

"Gene?" Sam said, a bit bolder this time. Nothing. Of course not, the man wasn't waking himself up with that racket and if Moira was able to sleep through it he half wondered if she were in a coma. A slight stirring from her side of the bed proved him wrong, and Sam paused in the doorway, re-evaluating his next move.

He bent low and crouched into the flat, his head nearly level with the height of the bed. He got close to Gene's snoring head, and in a move he knew was wrong the second he'd done it, he shook Gene's dangling arm.

"Gene...Get up..." Sam said.

Gene's snoring choked on itself, and he coughed and wheezed as he blinked into wakefulness.

"Dear God, Gov," Sam said to Gene's bleary eyed face. "It's no wonder you got heart trouble—You've really got to do something about that apnea."

Gene's eyes widened as he took in Sam's face, which was only inches from his own. The look of utter, shocked apoplexy gave Sam a sickening feeling in his gut, which he knew was going to get a good kicking to it sometime in the next few minutes. Gene rolled out of the bed onto the floor and made a run after Sam in a crab-like crouch, with Sam backing up in a panic out of the flat and into the hall in a similar fashion.

Gene's hands were on the lapels of Sam's leather jacket, and as usual Sam was tossed against the wall, Gene's spit labeling his brow as he shouted down at him.

"I was having the most wonderful dream," Gene growled at him. "Guess what, Sam? You had no part in it." Gene's face was a truly unhealthy shade of purple. "You turned a lovely dream into a nightmare about a nonce. Help me out here, Sam...There has to be a reason you're here other than you acting the part of a jealous poof."

"The heroin you gave me was cut with a deadly amount of fentanyl," Sam said. "It's as rotten as can be."

Gene's hold on Sam's lapels suddenly relaxed. "Close call, that," Gene said, his angry mood humbled.

There was a slight stirring within the flat. Moira's voice called out Gene's name lazily. Gene bit his bottom lip in thought, the air in the hallway suddenly charged with the promise of a sultry morning wasted happily in blissful intimacy.

"Not to worry, my love, it's just me Mother popped 'round." Gene gave Sam an unexpected, pleading look. "See you in an hour. No, make it an hour and a half." Gene checked his watch, the only other article of clothing on him. "Noon, and not a moment later."

"I'll see you at the car in ten minutes," Sam said. "There's some details about this you and I have yet to iron out."

/

As it was still early morning, the station was eerily quiet. Phyllis yawned at the front desk, clearly finishing up a night shift. She didn't nod at Sam and Gene as they walked into the main office. Ray and Chris were already within, Ray popping rubber bands across the room with an unsharpened pencil and Chris nervously sipping instant coffee.

"Good morning, class," Gene boomed. "What's the lesson for today? Ah yes, 'Early to bed and early to rise makes DCI Gene Hunt one miserable bastard so you'd better make sure that when you speak, you've got something I want to hear—Out with it, Chris: How goes the hunt for Picky Nicky?"

Chris paused in mid sip of his coffee, his bangs hanging messily in front of his eyes. "We got him, boss," Chris said. He hid behind his mug of coffee, and wouldn't meet Sam's eyes.

"About two am last night," Ray cheerfully indulged. "Tried to get a hold of you, but there weren't no answer."

"Hear that, Sammy boy? Nice and pat police work without the need for unnecessary surveillance." He gave Sam a condescending glare. "You could have just sat back and let the whole thing take care of itself. We could have had a nice, relaxing evening taking care of our outside interests. Like measuring for a set of curtains, for example."

"You got Picky Nicky," Sam asked, ignoring Gene's jibe. "Is he still here?"

Ray smacked his gum. "Of course. He's been a right gent, he has. Quiet fella, didn't give us no bother. Wish they was all like him."

Sam didn't like the way Ray was grinning at him. He cautiously slid off his leather jacket and placed it neatly behind the back of his desk chair. "Bring him in to be interviewed. We need to ask him some questions."

"Heh. He might not be all that forthcoming with answers." Ray snapped his gum, icy blue eyes triumphant.

"I...I don't think we can bring him in," Chris meekly replied.

"Yeah, might be hard to fit it through them narrow doors." Ray openly chuckled. He snapped his gum again, and Sam wished he'd choke on it.

Sam was already tired of this game. "Get what through the doors?"

"The gurney," Ray said, grinning.

"Messy business, down dockside way," Chris quietly explained.

"Picky Nicky is lying in the morgue." Ray grinned, the scent of spearmint cloyly hovering around him. "Doc says it was a stab wound at the base of the skull." He slapped the back of his own head, and laughed.

"Popped his nut just like a balloon."


	5. Chapter 5

MAD RUSSIAN—chapter five

The morgue was, oddly enough, the only place in the station where Sam felt truly comfortable. Within the confines of a dark, ten by ten room was the basic reality that people lived, then died, with a coroner making notes on how they had done both. It was a fascinating process, this autobiographical decay.

He'd worked closely with pathologists in the past, and he'd been comfortable in the labs, learning all he could about forensic entomology and other facets of human death. A corpse no longer held the same mysterious, macabre distinctions it had when he was a younger officer. Once that spark that was possibly the human soul departed, all that was left was a piece of raw meat which, depending on environmental conditions, either slowly or quickly rotted away by specific stages, gradually becoming the earth beneath their feet.

Sam watched as Ray kicked at a small mound of dust at his heel, and wondered just when it would be his turn to be reduced to the dense matter beneath the feet of an arsehole.

Picky Nicky lay in front of him on the slab, his body virtually untouched. He was still fully clothed, a fact that Sam found irksome, but at least time of death could be fairly easily determined.

"He's in full rigor mortis," Sam said, and he tested the stiff limbs, nodding as they remained stone. "He's been dead at least ten to twelve hours."

Chris and Ray were huddled in a corner of the morgue, considerably less fascinated with death than Sam was. Ray had his wide tie covering his mouth, and Sam couldn't blame him. There was little ventilation in the tiny room, and though he was in the early stages of putrefication Picky Nicky was beginning to ripen like a week old peach.

Sam waved Chris over. "We need to roll him on his side," he said to him. "I want to get a good look at that head wound."

Chris was far from being a willing participant, his hands shaking as he cowered away from the now rather grim remains of the man known only as Picky Nicky.

"Just hold onto his shoulders and pull while I push," Sam said. "On the count of three...One...Two...Three..."

Chris did as instructed, his face turned away and twisted into a grotesque grimace. A nasty stench of rotted blood met their senses as Picky Nicky was rolled onto his side. Early stage blowfly larvae dripped from the wound onto the slab, a fact that no doubt contributed to Chris's sudden retching. Sam did his best to ignore Chris's torment, and turned his full attention on the head wound that had done Picky Nicky in. The puncture wound was about half an inch in diameter, Sam noted, and had a distinctively half moon shape.

"Small enough wound," Sam said, frowning.''Are you sure the coroner said this was the cause of death?"

"Written in indelible ink." Ray replied, his words tainted with spearmint.

Sam gave him a tired once over, and then held out his hand. "Give me that pencil, Ray. The unsharpened one in your pocket."

Giving Sam a condescending smirk, Ray handed him the leaded wood. Gene, for his part, was standing opposite Sam, his arms as crossed as his expression. "Bit difficult to take notes with a virgin pencil. Try scribbling with one that has a point, amazing the things you can jot down—Which reminds me, Sam, just what are we doing here? The coroner has already said what's done the nonce in, and I have a habit of trusting the esteemed doctor and his rather ornately decorated medical degree."

Sam sighed and paused over the wound with the unsharpened pencil. "I want the trajectory," Sam said. "I want to know the angle of the stabbing, and just how deep it was." He hesitated only slightly with the pencil in his hand before holding his breath and poking it through the small puncture wound. He sank it in a good two inches, past the spinal cord and well into the brain's medulla. The pencil jutted out from the wound at an awkward angle, the rubber end pointing downwards to the point it was in near alignment with the victim's back.

Sam pulled the pencil out, its surface sticky with old blood, the tip dripping with the liquefied remains of grey matter. Chris bolted out of the room, hand on mouth. His retching echoed down the corridor outside the morgue.

Sam ignored the outburst, and pointed to the wound with the still dripping pencil. "Picky Nicky's spinal cord was damaged with an upward thrust of a slim, sharp object, similar to this pencil. What bothers me is the angle—It's too awkward for a simple stabbing motion, and it's too clean a wound, there's no sign of further blows to the head or anywhere else on his body. There's just this little hole, very precise, very neat. Whoever did this knew exactly where to cause the most damage." Sam frowned. "What I don't get is his connection to our three dead heroin addicts. He was just as unknown as the rest of them, with what the barman told me. He called him a scavenger, he had no issue with being homeless, had no real outside connections from their group. Except, of course, for Moi..."

"Ray, wait outside," Gene suddenly said.

"Gladly," Ray muttered. "Bloody well stinks in here."

The door to the morgue closed behind him, leaving Sam and Gene alone with death between them. Genes arms remained cross, his glare fiery enough to set Sam alight.

"Get your head off that track," Gene said to him. "You and I both know she's got an airtight alibi."

Sam crossed his own arms and glared back at Gene. "Bit pat, that."

"I'm warning you..."

"You thought it the same second I did," Sam said to him. "He's been dead a good twelve hours, Gene, the forensics entomology confirms it." He poked at the squirming maggots on the side of the gurney. "Not to mention he's in full rigor. You weren't at her flat until just after midnight—She had the earlier part of her evening to herself, and I doubt anyone can corroborate her whereabouts yesterday afternoon."

"It don't make sense," Gene said, considering this and instantly dismissing it. "Why'd she give him that kicking, then? Seems she'd got her point across, can't see how murder would figure in it."

Sam frowned, thinking over his facts. He pulled out his notebook and flipped it back a few pages, to earlier yesterday afternoon. "Odd, isn't it?" he said to Gene.

"Yes, you are," Gene replied.

Sam ignored him. "Picky Nicky made quite a production of making sure we knew about Moira, but he didn't make a mention of the three victims even though they were his supposed close associates." Sam frowned over his notebook.

"Out with it, Sammy boy, it'll only keep you up at night."

"I think he wanted her to be arrested," Sam said. "He wanted you to find her heroin and put her into jail. Only, you didn't. His plan fell through, and he failed."

Sam snapped his notebook shut, suddenly understanding. The shock of it left him reeling.

"Failed at what?" Gene asked.

"Here, you can't go in there!" they heard Phyllis's voice shouting in the corridor. "Hey, you stop!"

The door to the morgue swung open, and two neatly coiffed and dapper looking young men pushed an empty gurney into the room. A black bag was already waiting open on the slab, and in a synchronized, fluid motion, Picky Nicky's body was scooped up and placed on the new gurney, his rotting flesh so neatly zipped up and tucked away it was as if he were simply a scrap of paper.

"Bloody hell!" Gene shouted. "What are you lot doing?"

He grabbed the gurney with both hands and there was a struggle between himself and the two young men who had so quickly sewn Picky Nicky up. "Give me back my body!"

A tall, slim figure suddenly appeared in the doorway, his personality precise. He was wearing what looked to be a fairly high ranking military uniform. His cap was neatly tucked beneath his arm, and his steps were confident and determined as he approached Sam and Gene.

"DCI Gene Hunt," he said, and Gene nodded curiously at him. "I am Major Gregory Wilmot, and I am here to inform you that your current active case, number A452, has been transferred to our department."

"You got it wrong—The only transfer this bastard is getting is one to forensics. My forensics," Gene angrily replied. "You're not taking my body anywhere!"

"What department are you from?" Sam asked, though he'd already guessed the answer.

A piece of officious looking paper was handed to Sam, and Major Wilmot gave his officers the go ahead to start transporting the body. Gene, of course, was having none of it.

"I don't care if he's from the gate's of heaven, he's not getting this case!" Gene shouted. He had a death grip on the gurney, and he struggled against the two men who had come to confiscate the corpse.

"Let go, you damned madman, you've been told—We got clearance!"

"You can't take my case from me you bloody bastards!"

"Watch it! He's going to topple!"

The remains of Picky Nicky fell onto the floor with a rather wet sounding thud. Sam hid his embarrassment behind the weighty parchment Major Wilmot had handed to him. Gene made a last ditch attempt to pull the body back by lunging for the black bag Picky Nicky had been encased in, but the gurney was tossed in his way, preventing him from getting a good grip. The two men hauled the body off on their shoulders, struggling audibly beneath its dead weight.

Picky Nicky was lost to Gene's scrutiny forever.

"I understand your frustration, DCI Hunt," Major Wilmot said, coolly. "But orders are orders."

He was stern and unmovable before them, as though he were ready at any moment to tell them to head over the ridge and start firing. 'He's at war,' Sam thought as he took in the Major's uncompromising face, his strict, cold determination. 'If he was told to press a button, he'd do it, no questions asked.'

"Oh, you'll be understanding, all right, once I get my loafers buried ankle deep up your bureaucratic ass."

Major Wilmot's tone became terse. "This decision comes from the direction of the Joint Intelligence Committee," Major Wilmot, his true rank indiscernible, got into Gene's personal space and stared him down. "This case is officially out of your jurisdiction." He turned his head and gave Sam a surly smile that held no mirth within it. "I suggest you both forget everything about it."

"Not bloody likely," Gene spat at him.

Ignoring Gene's threat, Major Wilmot left the morgue, his battleground presence leaving behind a stale taste to the air. Gene's face was red with fury, and before Sam could stop him, he wrenched the door open and shouted furiously into the corridor.

"Make a note of him, you lot! Big Bastard Brother's on the prowl! Double plus fucking one!" He slammed the morgue door shut, locking himself and Sam into the sudden silence of the grey room. The air still held traces of Picky Nicky's unfortunate demise, and one or two of his little maggot progeny lay squirming on the morgue floor. Sheepishly, Sam handed the official paper he'd been given to Gene, who in one quick movement grabbed it and ripped it in half.

"Well, what are we waiting for?" Gene asked Sam. The two halves of paper softly drifted to the floor.

"Gov..." Sam began, knowing already that to argue it would be pointless.

"Let's pop round to her flat, where you can tell her to her face that you think she's a bloody murderer. If she's not up to the task of kicking you in the balls for even suggesting such a thing, I'll be more than happy to oblige." Gene swung the morgue door open. "I know you by now, Sam Tyler. You got a theory running about in that puny noggin of yours—I'm just dying for the opportunity to see how stupid you look when I prove you wrong."

/

The melancholy intonations of a cello met them as they made their way down the back alley to the iron stairs that led up to Moira's flat. Gene paused at the base of them, his hand a bit too steady on the iron rail.

"We don't have to do this," Sam said, feeling defeated before he'd even begun.

"I finish what I start," Gene shortly replied.

Moira's cello gave their ascension up the stairs a melodramatic air, gloomy notes tearing emotion out of the sunny afternoon in pinpricks of sadness. They approached her kitchen window, and Gene paused in its frame, watching Moira as she played, her hands on the body of her instrument in a familiarity that no human being would ever be able to accomplish. Her red hair was tied loosely on the top of her head, her eyes dreamily shut as she brought a tender, heart-breaking note to a pain-wracked close.

It was only when the very last breath of the note died upon the sunlight outside of her flat that Gene rapped his knuckles on her kitchen window. Moira remained where she sat, her one steadfast lover draped in her arms. She motioned to Sam to open the window and come in.

"I shall open a bottle of wine," she said, grinning widely at them both as they stepped over the windowsill. "We shall get drunk, and smoke cigarettes, and laugh like we are all old, good friends, yes?"

Sam followed Gene into the flat. He felt small, like a man delivering news of a funeral. "I don't smoke," he said to her.

Moira lit up a brown cigarette and took a deep breath from it. Smoke plumed above her in a sultry halo, her features pale and barely defined in the bright afternoon sunlight that shone on her from the kitchen window. Gene stood uncertain in front of her, his stature equally shrunk in her presence Bad news did this to people, Sam thought. Unhappiness whittled down the soul.

He wondered how many small souls paused at his real bedside as a machine counted out his breath night after night.

"I'm afraid we're here on official business," Sam said to her. Gene remained silent and stoic beside him. "The man who assaulted you yesterday afternoon was murdered last night."

"Really?" Moira said, and laughed.

"Good news, is it?" Gene said to her, his voice hollow.

"I should think I will be able to sleep most easily from now on," she said to him.

She took a long, pensive drag of her cigarette, her arm lazily draped around the neck of her cello.

"He was called Picky Nicky," Sam said. "No one knows his real name." He cleared his throat, nervous under her careless scrutiny. 'She's a polished gun,' he thought. 'Smooth and confident, full of the promise of threat.'

"We don't have the names of his associates, either," Sam continued. "The three who died last week."

"The stuff was no good," Gene said to her. "Good thing you let me have it, otherwise you'd be dead this morning."

"Hm. A close call," Moira said, but her voice betrayed little concern.

Sam studied her carefully. "Why did you let DCI Hunt take your only supply of heroin?"

Moira shrugged. "I have decided it is not healthy for me." She gave Gene a dazzling smile. "My darling, please...Stop it with these long faces. I cannot bear to have my dear friends in such a sombre mood. This afternoon is so beautiful, there are no dreary clouds in this sky. Come and drink wine with me."

"You're in a cheerful mood for an addict who hasn't had a hit in a while," Sam said. "How long has it been? Ten, twelve hours? You should be showing visible signs of withdrawal by now. The track marks on your arms look real, and I suspect they are, so you tell me—How can you tolerate sitting here with no hope of getting a fix to make you well?"

Moira smiled, but the sentiment behind it was ice. "I have very strong pain threshold," she said.

"I'm betting you do," Sam replied, his expression grim. "It's the one skill you managed to take from your time as a political prisoner in Psikushka. You learned how to compartmentalize, disassociate yourself from pain." Sam sighed, and took out his notes. He simply couldn't look at her as he touched on wounds that were no doubt still festering. "You were drugged, isolated in a room with no window for days, maybe weeks at a time. You were beaten, emotionally battered. You were given lumbar punctures as a form of torture—The headaches that resulted must have been unbearable, like your skull was going to collapse in on itself..."

Moira's cold demeanor became sub zero under Sam's speech. She took a drag of her cigarette and let out a breath of frost.

"The cello takes a lot of time to master. All of that practice, all that time with such a demanding, cumbersome instrument..." She let out a shaky sigh. She stretched back aching shoulders. "It is very hard on the back."

"I'm not trying to be cruel," Sam said. "I only want to make a point..."

"Which you'd better get to," Gene growled. He tapped at his watch. "Your balls are on borrowed time."

"Picky Nicky was stabbed at the base of the skull with a slim, sharp object. His spinal cord was punctured, and the tip of the weapon went straight into his brain. The cerebrospinal fluid in his brain leaked out, causing swelling on the brain. He died a while later, when his brain properly suffocated from the resulting pressure." Sam shrugged at her. "It's what a backwards lobotomy does to someone."

Moira took a drag of her cigarette. "I'm sure he had quite the headache before he died." She sighed, and arched her back, placing her fist at the base of her spine where she rubbed out an ache. "And what is this mysterious weapon that caused this, as you say, 'backwards lobotomy'?"

"Oh, I don't know," Sam said. "A piece of sharp metal, like a small pick jutting out between the knuckles of someone's fist. Or maybe something a little more glamorous, like a pair of killer heels."

She flicked ashes on the floor in front of him.

"The others," Sam continued, not missing a beat. "You know who those three dead 'junkies' really are."

"Sam," Gene said, offering Moira an understanding smile. "You're off your nut. This 'theory' of yours is pure shit. There's not a bit of proof to what you're saying."

"Who was he?" Sam asked Moira pointedly, ignoring Gene's protest. "The man we knew as Picky Nicky—He was one of them in Psikushka, wasn't he? He tortured you, he tried to break you in every way he could think of. That's why it went down as it did, why you kicked him and let him know his days were numbered. Just a bit of added torment before the actual deed was done. The others were just business, but Picky Nicky...He was personal."

"If you are so certain I have murdered this person, as you say, then perhaps you should arrest me?" She held her wrists out to Gene, and playfully giggled. "I assure you, the results could be quite fascinating." A delicate, pale hand covered her mouth as she giggled once more. "Oh, my dear Gene, you are blushing again!"

"You know as well as I do that nothing will come of it," Sam replied.

Gene let out a hiss of frustration, and paced in front of the two of them. "For God's sake, why do I feel like I'm watching a play with half the lines missing? Fill in the bloody blanks, Sam, or I'm writing a book of me own. I'll title it 'How To Pound Sam Tyler Into Pixie Dust'. Ought to be a best-seller, a right cookbook to outdo that Julia Child."

Gene's tirade was cut short by Moira's voice,its cadence soft, reflective. She propped her cello at its accustomed spot near the head of her bed, and rubbed the back of her neck with the heel of her hand.

"Do you know, I was very popular cellist in Soviet Union. I played for large concerts, hundreds if not thousands, most of them rich dignitaries and special officials. My performances were strict schedules, and I played those pieces which would please them. They would clap politely when I was finished, and comment to one another about the superiourity of the Soviet arts, of its purity and mastery.

What they do not talk of is the wild impulse to play those things that are forbidden, to pull the strings until the blood pours out of a cello's body. Can you understand what it is to pull the soul out of an object and be told you are to cage it?"

Sam's head sank to his notes. He didn't want to meet her cold scrutiny. "Freedom of expression is a virtue I consider quite highly," he said.

"How wonderful for you," Moira replied. "For some other people, it is considered madness."

Sam's eyes were soft as he looked on her. "Was that why you were sent to Psikuskha?"

"Who knows?" Moira impatiently shrugged him off. "Perhaps I am truly mad."

Her flat was now a depressing place, despite the cheerful sunshine that continued to soar unabated into it. A dark mood had descended upon all of them, Gene especially. He eyed Moira with a calculating intensity, his hurt showing in the formality of his speech.

"Is any of it true, what he's saying?" Gene asked her.

Moira gave him a sad smile. "I am a lot of things, Gene Hunt, but I am no liar. Are you so positive you want me to answer you?"

Gene remained silent, the air thick with an unspoken, highly unsettling truth between them. He turned away from her, his silence belying defeat.

"I just have one question for you," Sam said, his attention on Gene, his soul full of empathy for this man twice-burned. "Where is Vlad the Bad?"

Moira made a face. "Who?"

"Your bad heroin supplier and the one who pointed out your targets," Sam said. "Come on, Moira, there's no need to play games here anymore."

"I have never played a game," Moira said, her ice broken with a sudden stab of hot anger. She turned to Gene. "This is what you think? That I am some liar, that I used you?"

"Seems about right," Gene replied.

Moira stormed out of her chair and with sudden alacrity slapped Gene full across the face. The tiny flat echoed with the blow, and Gene's cheek was shocked by the red outline of Moira's hand.

"I have played for dignitaries, for hundreds of politely clapping, bored hypocrites who only came to my performances to boast of their cultured breeding." She raised a shaking hand to the injury she'd caused to Gene's cheek, her knuckles lightly touching it in an intimate caress. "I have never truly felt so proud of my work as when a stomping, stupid oaf caused such a scene as to be tossed out due to his appreciation for my performance."

Her thumb ran along the underside of Gene's lips, and Sam shifted uncomfortable where he stood. He eyed the open kitchen window, and wondered if he was going to have to make a quick exit rather than be witness to an afternoon of unspoken forgiveness and unbridled passions—Neither of which were concepts Sam could easily associate with Gene Hunt.

"Vlad the Bad," Gene said to her, his voice oddly small, uncertain. "Where do we find him?"

"I don't know any such person," Moira said, and Sam's gut told him she was telling the truth. "Perhaps you should go to where you first heard about him."

Sam's heart just about skipped a beat. He caught Gene's eye, and they both nodded.

"The Scottish barman," they said in unison.


	6. Chapter 6

MAD RUSSIAN—chapter six

A light breeze blew bits of charred garbage beneath a 'Keep Britain Tidy' poster, their black remains collecting in dust against the corner of the building that once housed the Underground. Fire crews had long left the scene, the early morning blaze reducing the club to ashes. All that remained of its existence was a simple press board barrier boarding up its sole entrance.

The afternoon remained stubbornly sunny, a cheerful breeze teasing the hem of Gene's camel coat, trailing it outwards.

"I should have known he weren't properly Scottish. He gave me a free pint."

Sam leaned against the hood of the Ford Cortina, his eyes squinting against the onslaught of sunlight. "So, what happens now?" Sam asked Gene.

Gene shrugged. "Dunno," he said. His hands were deep in the pocket of his coat, his shoulders shrugging away an imaginary chill. He was uncharacteristically subdued, a fact that sparked a measure of empathy within Sam. Sam gave his co-worker a good once over, and felt a small smile escape onto his lips.

"I just figured it all out," he said to Gene. "Where you fit in all this."

Gene pursed his lips, confused at Sam's observation. "Out with it," he said.

"You're the Bond girl," Sam replied.

Gene frowned, real confusion shadowing his brow. "How's that?"

"You know, the Bond girl," Sam said. "Always central to the plot, but at the same time removed from it. The love interest to the secret agent, the little injection of glamour—or in your case, a scruffy charm. You're the eye candy to her adventure, Gene. Still...I doubt you'd look good in a bikini."

"You still on about that, then, thinking she's some 007?" Gene shook his head. "The KGB making noise in Manchester—Next you'll be telling me the Berlin wall is going to crumble down to dust and the Russkies and Americans become bosom pals."

Sam raised a brow, but decided against revealing the truth of that theory. "I keep forgetting, we're still in the grip of a nasty conflict." Sam sighed into the sunlight that nearly blinded him. "The battlegrounds of the Cold War were very quiet."

Gene leaned against the door of the Ford Cortina, his expression grim. "It's a right mess. I don't know where to start with it."

"Nothing's to be done," Sam said, shrugging. "Government sanctioned political assassinations are a tad out of our league."

He gave Gene a concerned once over. "Are you going to see her again?"

Gene remained quiet, his world considerably more complicated than it had been only forty-eight hours earlier. "She's a murderess," he said.

"Or an unsung hero of national security," Sam added. "It all depends on your perspective."

"All's fair in love and war and all of that, is what you're saying," Gene said. Sam nodded, remaining silent as Gene took a cigarette out of his pocket and placed it between his lips.

His lips were pressed tight around the cigarette as he lit it, hands cupped around the flame. He took a long drag before letting his hand drop away, ashes trailing in the breeze. "It's all too grey for my liking. I don't like the taste of it."

"Tell me Gene, what bothers you more...The killing of a torturer or the nuclear bomb? I should think both are issues that, if you were given a solution to enact, you yourself wouldn't hesitate to do right by the innocent people who would be saved." Sam shook his head, sick at the fallacy of human history. "You just stumbled in the way of her tragedy, Gene. Those weren't decisions you had to make."

"I don't care about any of that," Gene said. He took a drag of his cigarette. "I just want a good life, one free of complications."

Somewhere in the distance, Sam could hear the faint blips of a heart monitor machine, the sigh and suck of a life support system filling and deflating his lungs.

"Sorry, Gov. Life doesn't come with that kind of package."

Gene flicked his cigarette onto the already ash strewn street in front of him. The ember tip remained lit as it rolled backwards and forwards against the breeze. Sam opened the passenger side door, and paused as he leaned against it.

"Here, I'll buy you a couple of rounds down the pub," Sam offered. "You look like you could use a few."

"No," Gene said, opening the driver's side door. "I'm popping back round Moira's."

Sam tapped the car door with his fingers, an uncertain tension winding its way into the air between them. "You're going to break it off, then," he said.

"Nah," Gene replied as Sam slid into the car.

A rather thoughtful mood surrounded Gene as he slid into the driver's seat, his stern demeanor softened by its aura.

"I was just thinking about music."

END


End file.
